I’ve been thinking about when to send an email verses blog. I’ve decided on a loose guideline: if more than 3 people would find something useful, I’ll blog it. If not it’s an email (or, even better, an instant message)
Somethings, like mailing lists, don’t map well to this guideline. To cover that, I’ve followed Ross Mayfield’s cue and added a “this email is bloggable” flag to my email signature.
This message is blog-able:
[x] yes [ ] please don’t
Notice this is a simplification from Mayfield’s 3 checkbox version – to me “please ask” really means “please don’t”. While reading his Email 2.0 post, I realized the sig could be simplified further. To minimize confusion, I don’t include the bloggable flag in private or “please don’t” messages anyway. That, and “please don’t” never felt right. In addition, if I don’t explicity grant you permission to use a private or semi-private email message publicly – then well, you won’t. Cause that ain’t Web 2.0 cool.
Thus, I’ve revised my flag to read:
— Feel Free to Blog This Message —
Cool!
However, the thing that makes it work for me, as a sender, is [x] ask first as a default.